| POETRY CURRENTS | |
APRIL IS THE CRUELLEST...
...You know the rest. It's been a long, hard spring for SoCal poetry, the worst news being the untimely passing of poet/artist/musician Gary Thomlinson. Thomlinson was an exceedingly cerebral and daring artist, a monolithic storyteller who wrote deeply intellectual and philosophical poetry. He was an outspoken community member, prone to speaking his mind and just as easily offering friendship. To say that he's going to missed is an empty statement. His absence is palpable already.
Thomlinson didn't leave a lot published, but there's a great poem in the anthology, Kill the Opossum, on Orange Ocean Press.
It's been a bad time for venues, too. Lob reports that he's closed down his reading at Club Mesa, due in part to the venue's change in ownership and in part to changes in his personal life. Thee Word Thing has had several incarnations, however, and we can possibly look forward to another incarnation down the road a bit. Lob also mentioned that there's the possibility of a Word Rave in the future, an all-night never-ending open reading with no time limits. These are some of the best poetry parties around, and not to be missed.
Likewise closing up shop is Penguins Hooked on Macaronics, Jaimes Palacio's long-running series at the Gypsy Den Café Grand Central. Take a look at Palacio's online column, “Between the Lines,” for the full scoop on that one.
SUMMERTIME, AND THE LIVING IS, ETC…
The Big Damn Poetry Slam has been rocking right along at its new home at the Blue Café in Long Beach. The Long Beach/Orange County Poetry Slam Finals are set for Sunday, June 3rd, 8 pm at the Blue Café, and are free, but one hopes that if you come, you'll throw five, ten, a hundred bucks at the Slam Team to get them to Seattle, Washington for the National Poetry Slam Finals. Qualified for the LBC so far are Jaimes Palacio, Rachel Kann, Ben Porter Lewis, Daniel McGinn, R-A-C and Besskepp, with Lea Deschenes, Eitan Kadosh and Lauren Wheeler hovering in the wild card slots and all being exceptionally difficult to knock out. The LBC finals will be hosted by myself and Mindy Nettifee, and the Slam Team that emerges will be coached by Derrick Brown and Paul Suntup.
Also on the horizon this summer is an anthology of Orange County and Long Beach Poets, featuring the likes of Charles Ardinger, Charles Webb, Gerald Locklin, Derrick Brown, Carrie Etter and more, and more and more. It's published by Tebot Bach, whose Web site is going up any day now, as soon as five penny poets ringleader Mifanwy Kaiser is rested up from her brief stay in the hospital. (She's okay, but send her love anyway. She deserves it. What did I say about it being a long, hard Spring?)
TONY BROWN IS COMIN' TO TOWN
The superhero of Worcester, MA poetry is making a rare California appearance! As pirated from the Worcester Poets Asylum Web Site:
Tony Brown has been performing his work around New England and beyond for over 20 years. His poetry combines principles of traditional Western form and structure with ideas borrowed from jazz improvisation, punk esthetics, popular culture, spiritual traditions from all over the world; and the ongoing competitive performance poetry movement known as slam. He is the publisher of 2x4, a currently dormant quarterly poetry magazine that showcases work from within the national performance poetry community. Tony has published his own poetry in various small magazines across the country, including Syncopated City, Echoes, Omnivore, Spoken Word Poets Anthology and Worcester Magazine. He has won the Worcester County Poetry Association contest (1994), placed second in the Pawtucket Arts Council's poetry contest (1990), and placed second in Worcester Magazine's annual poetry contest (1996).
Tony was a member of the 1999 Worcester Slam Team that competed in Chicago, and, in the summer of 2000, he was one of 100 poets chosen for the SlamAmerica Tour bus, a cross-country rolling poetry performance that spent a month on the road, traveling from Seattle to Providence. (OK, he only did the East Coast leg... it was still very cool.)
He has performed in coffeehouses, rock clubs, bars, libraries, schools, churches, and other strange places throughout the country, although he is usually found somewhere in that hotbed of poetic activity known as “the Golden Triangle” -- the area bounded by Boston, Worcester, and Providence, RI. His home reading is at the Java Hut (Sunday nights in Worcester, MA), where he is the host.
Tony's chapbooks include Church and State, Spirit Knows Spirit, The Radioactive Artist's Sketchbook, Narrow Path-Falling Rock, and 6 (all on Doublebunny Press); and At the Place of Definitions and Lilith's Shadow (on Loyal Weasel Press). His eighth and latest chapbook is One Spark (Doublebunny Press, November 2000).
Tony Brown will appear:
- Sunday, May 20th at the Blue Café, Long Beach, 3 pm
- Monday, May 21st at Gypsy Den Grand-Central, Santa Ana, 7:30 pm (with Paul Suntup and Jen Goldman)
- Tuesday, May 22nd at Poetic License at the Zen Restaurant, Los Angeles, 8 pm
- Wednesday, May 23rd at the Ugly Mug, Orange, 8 pm (with Don Campbell)
- Friday, May 25th at the Fidelity Federal Bank, Huntington Beach, 8 pm (with Fred Voss and Joan Job Smith)
- This in from Carole Luther:
Mr. Lee Mallory has invited us to read at a “FarStarFire Press Poets” night Wednesday, June 13th, 8 pm at Alta Coffee House, Newport Beach. It would be my great honor to see as many of you there as possible. Please mark your calendars and plan to attend.
- And this came to us from Robert Roden:
Publication reading for Riprap 23, Thursday, May 17th, 2001 @ 7:30 pm. This event is free, and copies of the journal will be given out at the reading. University Art Museum, near North Campus Center and College of Business, California State University, Long Beach, 562.985.5761. Riprap is CSULB's annual literary magazine, edited by Robert Roden, Kelly Shire, and Jeff Epley. Contributors: Jason Allen, Charles Ardinger, Mariane Asad, Timothy Butler, Megan Clary, Michael Clements, Dee Cohen, Alison Cotter, Amy Cucinella, Andrea Dumas, Hillary Eller, Josh Filan, Kathryn Formosa, Tasha Fouts, Margaret Elysia Garcia, David Goetz, Jerry Gordon, Sim Grewall, Nicholas Guest, Jen Hawk, Noah Haytin, Tenaya Hills, Mifanwy Kaiser, Helena Lazaro, Cricket Lee, Noelle Marie Leiblic, Lyn Lifshin, Irene Lipski-Howard, Kathryn Lucero, David Madgalene, Jason McCrarey, Audrey Mink, Marquis Nave, B.Z. Niditch, Ryan Noble, Tim Perez, R. Rivera, Hally C. Saldana, G.L. Tomlinson, Don Weinstock, Kathie Weir, Carley Westling, and an interview with Aimee Bender.
Also, graduating MFA writers in fiction and poetry read their work Wednesday, May 23rd, 2001 @ 7:00 pm. This event is also free, at the University Art Museum, near North Campus Center and College of Business, California State University, Long Beach, 562.985.5761. Featuring: Mason Boyer, Alison Cotter, Rebecca Cummings, Tyler Dilts, Elena Domingo, Jeff Epley, Jason Graham, Jason McCrarey, Joe Pichette, Robert Roden, Buffy Shaheen, Kelly Shire.
Lastly, we heard from Johnathan Farmer that the new issue of UCI's lit journal, Faultline, is going to be fantastic. The current issue features the likes of Aimee Bender, Yusef Komunyakaa, Eve Wood, Patty Seybourne and Jervey Tervalon -- all UCI grads, but alas, no work by UCI's most recently celebrated author, Michael Chabon, who recently won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature. If you haven't read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Klay, I recommend it wholeheartedly. Chabon's too busy for an interview these days, but he was nice enough to pass along these fine thoughts on the passing of Joey Ramone: “I loved the Ramones... I was a very picked-on kid in high school, and then I went to see Rock'N'Roll High School... and found the courage to be strange and objectionable...”Buy the book • The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Klay
And I can't think of a better note to end this column, and this very long spring on. Have a bitchin summer,
